


Showing Your Hand

by blushies



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: During Canon, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Sloppy Makeouts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23271967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blushies/pseuds/blushies
Summary: In which Martin Blackwood and Jonathan Sims navigate the murky waters of their minds, their own pasts, and the archives to find each other.POV alternating during various plot moments of seasons 1-4.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	1. John - From Wondering to Wanting

**Author's Note:**

> I am still working my way through the podcast, but wanted to write about these two so much! Sweep anything that doesn't fit with the rest of the canon under the rug for me, yes?

The desk of Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, was empty. He had processed all his statements for the day, there was no new information on Jane Prentiss to sort through from the archival assistants, and the phrases of Jonathan’s other readings had long since begun blurring into unintelligible gibberish. His ass ached. His outdated generic office chair had become too uncomfortable to sit in hours ago, the feeble cushions had given out under his weight and revealed its aluminium under-structure to his thighs. And yet there he was, opening a sealed box left by the door of his office containing new files from locked storage. With the worms about, it was obviously safer for him to be at his own flat, sinking into the embrace of his couch and eating the leftovers of last night’s take-away in front of the telly-so why was he here, about to record yet another new statement by the glow of the tarnished banker’s lamp whose presence had preceded his own tenure at the Institute?

As he pondered this question, something began to stir at the other side of the hall. Jonathan was the type of man who startled easily when disturbed while doing any task requiring his concentration. In college, this trait had been a joke for the less charitable of his acquaintances, and, for the more empathic, the cause for adopting strict approach protocols. If you had to approach young Jonathan Sims while he was buried in a textbook at the library, perhaps to ask him for notes you missed or just to say hi, the proper etiquette was as such: adopt a heavy tread while walking at least 3 meters in advance of your approach, then, try an elaborate set of gestures and waves to disturb the air around him, and, only if all else fails, resort to the shoulder tap – but beware of the inevitable jump and yelp that followed. Jon had never been able to shake whatever it was that wound his insides so tightly during his quiet hours, and working at the institute had not done this trait of his any favours.

This volatile reflex had been triggered in full force when Martin stumbled in wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. Jon clutched at his collar, wind moving from his lungs to his throat in a shout that escaped his mouth before it reached his conscience. The anger that burned red-hot in his face was a defense mechanism that came to him like a knee goes swinging when hit by a hammer. He was out of control and left to deal with the fallout.

His heart was still thumping as Martin made his apologetic exit. As the sound of pumping blood exited his ears, something began to creep in through the edges of Jon’s mind, leaking through the folds of his brain like a spilled drink moving through the grout of a tiled floor. That run-in with Martin, while shocking, had also left him feeling something almost close to satisfaction.  
No. Oh no. _That_ was an unacceptable reason to be staying late. He had stolen glances at Martin in meetings before, a one-time vice. He got his fill, felt guilty about it, and now the current situation at the institute demanded no less than the full breadth of his intellectual and professional aptitude. This need- this compulsion- went deeper than getting a chance to play peep-show with his co-worker’s wide shoulders, and he refused to entertain the thought.

On the upshot, the sudden shock of Martin’s intrusion had seemed to have unglued him from the chair. Jon felt resolute as he made to leave for the night, thrusting his fist through the grey sleeves of his coat with conviction. He would find out the actual reason he felt so stuck in the institute and it would certainly not be that.

\---

As the weeks moved on, the desk of Jonathan Sims changed. It filled with more cryptic statements and hurried notes that described lines and points that crossed but never quite connected. Absorbed in his quest, time passed like the last grains of sand in an hourglass of indeterminate size – dreadfully slowly at times, and too quick at others. Jonathan felt like he was stuck on a train hurtling along its track in the dark, and somewhere there may just be the brick wall that ends it all for everyone. Despite the heightened unpleasantness of his day-to-day work, he still couldn’t force himself to leave the damn office in the evening. Every night he worked himself dizzy with endless statements and archived texts. Each attempt to leave left him with a nauseating overwhelm of sensation, like sudden onset heat stroke. He didn’t know if the statements were making things better or worse, as he seemed to increasingly feel their absence regardless of how many he had read in a day.

Apart from the sickness, the worst of all were the worms. The single worms had been bad enough. A single worm could cause enough damage in a short span that constant vigilance was necessary. Jon couldn’t even put his head down on his desk for a brief scrap of respite every now-and-then for fear of waking up to one of them boring through the side of his face. But now they had the swarms. Dozens of them would wriggle up through the floor and spread out to every corner of his office. They seemed to be getting faster, too. Jon would do his best to clear the room before he started a statement, but upon halting the turning of his tape recorder and returning to the present moment, dozens of them would have slipped in and scattered throughout the space without his notice.

The first time it happened, he let out a considerable yell, noticing the swarm after coming up for air on a particularly morbid statement. To his surprise, Martin had burst into his office almost immediately, extinguisher already at the ready. This time, seeing Martin in his boxer shorts was a relief. The two of them made quick work of the scattered swarm together. After recovering their breath from the rush of activity, Martin had breathlessly explained with cheeks flushed from exertion that the swarms had become a regular occurrence in the room that was now his residence. It was his first thought when he heard Jon yelp.

From then on, Martin made regular stops by Jon’s office. If he was overwhelmed with a sudden swarm, Jon would shout for Martin, who would burst in with an extinguisher, working quickly and methodically to help eliminate the threat. Once a night, Martin would rap softly on Jon’s door and crack it open to say a simple “Alright, Jon?” before heading off to bed, making sure the archivist hadn’t silently suffocated in the damn bugs while alone in his office. He never had. Jon, for his part, would respond with the quickest “Yes, thank you.” he could muster while keeping his eyes sternly fixed on a random spot of whatever yellowed page he was closest to him on his desk in a bid to try and look busy. To try and look like he wasn’t willing his ears not to miss a single wisp of his name and the gentle way it came out of Martin’s mouth. To try and look like the kind of man who doesn’t replay that sound in his own mind as he lay in his sleepless bed every night. To try and look like a man who didn’t wish his own mind was a tape recorder that could perfectly etch the shape of that sound, so he could play it back and read between the lines of the single-syllable waveform.

When all the statements had been read, and all the paperwork had been filed, and Jonathan still couldn’t get out of his office chair, he almost turned to wishing. He almost wished that the footsteps prodding past his doorway were coming to see him again. He almost wished that the intensity of his gaze on the door could be so powerful that it would tell Martin everything that his voice couldn’t muster.


	2. Martin - Too Much, Not Enough

Martin Blackwood had tried out for every school sports team during his academic career. Coaches would see his tall stature and wide frame, and begin to look at him with the glowing sheen of potential tinting their gaze. It never took too long before the glimmer in their eyes dulled. Just a few practices with Martin Blackwood would reveal a chink in their golden vision of him. Martin was a bit too soft for wrestling, Martin was a bit too distracted by his after school walks to make it to every football practice on time, Martin couldn’t keep a consistent grasp on the rules of ice hockey. He was too big to fit in in normal spaces, and could muster too little to be productive in fields where his size was welcome. He spent life feeling like he was wobbling on the narrow ridge between the faces of a single coin.

His brief stint in university was no different. He threw himself into any department that would take him, but he never quite stuck to any of them. Even in the English department, his poetry fell short of the academic style his professors were looking for. His writing, like his frame, was too rounded off, lacking the brute faces and sharp turns of post-modernist pieces.   
His last attempt at a degree before his mother fell ill was in the natural sciences. Most of the lectures of biological systems and taxonomies flew right over his head, so he spent his hours looking at the anatomical diagrams of living organisms that broke up the indecipherable paragraphs of his textbooks. He marvelled at how the subtle differences of a single part of an organism could turn one thing into something else on the complete opposite side of the natural world. He toyed with the idea that maybe Martin Blackwood was a different species. Being too different in general size from the standard Homo Sapien, his limbs too bloated and deviated from the specimens he saw in billboards and on the high street. Martin Blackwood must be a bit of an alien, a bit of a monster, so it only made sense that he had been relegated to wandering the silent hallways of the archives after dark.

Martin was terribly grateful to have a place to stay after the Prentiss attack on his flat, but spending this much time in the deafening silence of the empty archives was beginning to take its toll on his mental state. When Jonathan Sims began staying late, it was both a relief and a curiosity. Spotting the glowing light creeping out from under the doorway of his boss’s office as he made the journey from the kitchenette to his bed filled him with a sense of reassurance. Life still went on, elsewhere in the world, even though the suffocating darkness of his room before he fell asleep felt like it went on for eternity.

Jon’s presence was like a bookmark, giving meaning to the endless pages in the story of the archives. His edges were sharp like an elegant cardstock and his poised demeanor exuded the strength of someone who could put an end to all nonsense with a single raised palm. This is what made his presence in the archives at night a curiosity. With power, grace and aptitude at his fingertips, why did he choose to spend his time in the archives? A place haunted by 80’s era office decor, actual supernatural threats and Martin’s ogre-ish frame?  
Martin was in full admiration of Jon’s dedication to ensuring the safety and work of the institute. It was the least he could do to help him fend off the worms and to bring him a cup of tea during his workday. Aside from being the least he could do, it was just about all he could do. He desperately wished he had the answers, or even the words, to exorcise the twisted tension that weaved itself through the sinewy frame of Jonathan Sims. If he knew the right thing to say, would he be able to watch him unwind himself enough for Martin to take him by the shoulders to the safety of a well-deserved nap?

Martin was well familiar with the pulling feeling that had defined every interaction with Jon since they met as colleagues in the institute. He knew it from Colin Jackson at summer camp, from the football team captain in sixth form, from the poetry teaching assistant in university. Following this feeling had only revealed more of the flaws in his nature. He had been too forward, too clumsy, he had made them uncomfortable and gotten ridiculed in return. The parts of himself he had put on show were burned long ago, and he had learned his lesson again and again. Keep these feelings tucked in, don’t show your hand, it’s too much of you to share, it’s too overwhelming for most. Cups of tea, fire extinguishers, “alright, Jon”s - this is what Martin could stand to give, but how he wished that he had more, or could be more. For him.

Every once in a while, Martin let himself linger just a second more outside his office to hear the sound of Jon’s pen adeptly scratching at paper, or to catch the thrum of his voice rattling through the door as he recorded a statement. He knew it was an act of theft, he was taking more than he was allowed to have, but he would take all he could get.

\---

Martin’s interactions with Jon remained a tense gamble of something he was prone to ruin with his overbearing nature until the day Jon had asked for more. Huddled in the safe room, away from Jane Prentiss’s attack, Jon and Martin had their heart-to-heart. The answer Martin gave to Jon’s question of why he was still at the institute was half the story. Martin was too worried about giving away too much. But between the tape recorder clicking itself on and off, Jon had turned to him and said more than Martin ever thought he’d get.

“Thank you, Martin.”  
“Pardon?”  
“I said thank you.”  
“Oh. Well i was just telling the truth about the whole being-stuck-here thing so-.”   
“I mean thank you for the cups of tea, for checking in before you go to bed, for the fire extinguishers.” Jon hesitated to continue, and Martin was stunned for words. The silence was a black hole between them, what lay on the other side was uncertain, until Jon opened up to say:  
“ You brought me… reassurance. I needed that.” He looked Martin in the eyes, and there was a softness to his gaze that he was not used to seeing in the face of another.

For the first time, Martin felt like he was just enough.

When the banging came at the door, startling the pair, their hands flew together just as a reflex. Their bodies were in just the right place at just the right time, that it was as natural as reaching for a torch in the dark. They stayed that way until they ran into Tim, and even after, as they wandered behind him in the tunnels. Martin thought he was being brave when he jumped out infront of Jon to field the new swarm of worms that had appeared out of nowhere, but again he had done too much, taken too large a leap, and found himself separated from Jon somehow. He could hear Jon’s shout echoing from somewhere in the distance of the tunnels, but it faded as fast as Martin had found himself lost and alone.

The next time they were alone together was when Jon asked for Martin’s statement.   
_Stupid_ , he thought to himself, as the tears escaped his eyes.   
“When I turned round you were gone. You were both gone. It was an accident..” Martin could hear the wobble in his own voice. The word sorry fell so flat in the dense space between them. Something had shifted inside Jon, and the ties between them were irreparably different from what they had been in the safe room.


End file.
